The fallout from the Infinity Ward firings and departures seems to get uglier by the minute. Now an anonymous industry source close to the Modern Warfare developer has provided some extra commentary to Kotaku, shedding some light on just how anxious Activision Blizzard has become about the whole mess.
"IW as you know it is dead...and it will continue to crumble. There are a lot more veterans who are definitely going to leave," the source said, adding that Activision Blizzard's management really seems worried: "They're scared sh*tless. They never saw this coming. They can't believe what's going on. At first they gave us some bullsh*t about moving up payments of all the money they owe us to sooner increments. That was when [designer] Todd [Alderman] and [engineer] Frank [Gigliotti] left. But with the announcement of Respawn and all the people leaving, they just got there [sic] heads in their hands."
While Activision has countersued former Infinity Ward heads Jason West and Vince Zampella, labeling the duo "self-serving schemers," Kotaku's industry source obviously sides with Infinity Ward and insists that Activision screwed the studio. "They fired the two most amazing leaders we've ever seen, and then shafted us all out of a lot of money that was promised to us...there is nothing they can do to gain our trust or respect. And I'm pretty sure they know it now," the source said.
The source also claimed that Activision is bringing in people from other studios to fill in gaps created by the recent Infinity Ward departures, and the publisher hopes to move forward without much trouble on Modern Warfare 3. Nevertheless, no one could possibly expect Modern Warfare 3 to live up to the pedigree of the second game at this point, not when so much key talent is already gone.
Update: Kotaku has received further comments from a different Infinity Ward insider, who puts a more positive spin on the situation at the studio. The insider stated, "First off, yes, it is a shitty situation, but there are two kinds of people left: ones that are sticking it out for the money, and others who want to make something work. We are not dead, we definitely lost original team members, but not all of the talent. When you talk about the people who left, they are the best in the business, but equally everyone at Infinity Ward deserves that same credential. We are here for the long haul of keeping the Modern Warfare name alive, but as your article clearly shows, certain people are still pissed about it. We just had this discussion in our Monday meeting, 'We still have the talent that will get us to where we need to go, and now is the time to find our new leaders.'"
2 Comments
April 19, 2010
Well the interesting thing is companies as a whole have fallen into this trap of the top managers thinking they alone are responsible for the success of a company and workers alone are responsible for the hardships. So why would they pay the people that actually do the day to day work and put out the products? What seems so clear to the common man is strangely unclear to the greedy top brass.
April 29, 2010
In order to fully understand this story in context you have to read the back story of why the other guys are leaving IW/Activision (simple google search of course) .. IMHO this is a case of a large company trying to maximize profits at the expense of creativity and the original features that made the MW series such a loved game with even the Original MW still having over 14000 dedicated servers on-line and active..